About Us

Axis Mundi is an online journal edited and
maintained by Religious Studies graduate students at the University of Alberta. We accept contributions from students in any year of study—undergraduate
and graduate—in universities and colleges across North America. We encourage
submissions pertaining to any aspect of the academic study of religion.

Axis
Mundi is sponsored by the University of Alberta Religious Studies Program and
affiliated with the UofA Religious Studies Graduate Students Society (RSGSS).

The intention of this essay is to explore the relationship between body discourse and power in the accounts the martyrs of early hagiography that were the precursors to and influential upon the prolific hagiographies of Medieval Europe: the mother and her seven sons of 2 Maccabees, The Scillitan Martyrs, and the Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas. These narratives provide a modality of opposition to domination and subjectivization in which the body, through the performance/non-performance of public rituals, is represented as having the capacity to resist the assimilation of community and self by hegemonic discourse and power.

This essay will explore the role of the repentant woman in Benedicta Ward’s Harlots of the Desert. Ward’s argument asserts that both men and women in the early centuries of Christianity had to undertake the task of overcoming their gender in order to become holy men and women, in either a monastic setting or as a desert dwelling hermit. I will argue that the task of overcoming gender in order to be in closer proximity to holiness in the early centuries of the church was a more difficult task for women than for men. This is because women had to first become like men, and then genderless, whereas men had simply to overcome one gender role. This paper will explore the evidence for such a claim by examining the textual evidence of early hagiographies present in Ward’s book.

As demonstrated in The Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas, confessor-martyrs were granted the opportunity to achieve a position of influence within their Christian community. The “power of martyrdom” that was granted to proto-martyrs granted the prisoners the capability of interceding on behalf of Christians who had denied their faith or failed to confess. Essentially, imprisoned confessors were given the privilege of the authority to forgive deniers. This paper will examine how Perpetua’s privileges extend from the divine realm into the earthly realm. Specifically, I will examine how Perpetua’s impending martyrdom provides her with the “power of the keys” where she is granted the status of a minister

This paper analyses Islamic Feminism as a progressive movement that has found legitimacy through the practice of Ijthad and has allowed feminist Muslims to reinterpret the sacred texts while extracting the patriarchal interpretations behind them. Although the movement has been very criticized, Islamic Feminism has problematized the situation of women in Islam and has proposed a new way to create a connection with the scriptures.